My darling baby Z decided to randomly conk daddy in the forehead with her upper lip. This did not end well for either party involved. Baby is crying, daddy feels guilty , then baby starts bleeding, and I never saw a grown man turn white so fast in my life. However, being the clever momma that I am (sometimes) I applied pressure and ice as best as I could on my wriggling, head turning tot, then decided it was time to head to the nurses station, aka….the kitchen. My initial thought was applying turmeric, but that was luckily only for a hairsplit of a second on my walk to the kitchen, and by the time I reached the kitchen, I had muddled through my brain and decided on honey. Local, raw, organic honey to be precise. Several things drew me to this conclusion. First, was a recollection of the time my dear baby Z decided to face plant a chair leg around 7 months old. I absolutely panicked. We weren’t home, we were at a friends house for a dinner party, and I had left my precious baby with a friends older teenage daughter while I went to grab a cup of tea. The cup wasn’t even full when I heard the cry, and recognized it right away. I was there in a dash (later I was told that my response time was rather remarkable actually) and quickly picked up my screaming in pain baby and was, as previously mentioned, panicked, and began calling out for my dear friend whose opinion I trusted completely, at that time more than ever, as all sense of first aid training had completely left me. Yes, this was a terrible time for that to happen, but that is reality. Anyway, my friend dipped her finger in sugar and stuck it in my daughters mouth. This was to stop the bleeding and distract all in one fell swoop, she was kind enough to explain. Upon research later on, I discovered that the sugar really doesn’t do anything other than the distraction part. The medical side of it was a bit of an old wives tale. But at the time it happened, she was my hero,and I will eternally be grateful for her help in my absolute moment of need.
Now, my second reasoning was that I had already used honey as a salve on cuts, burns and infections with amazing results, so I figured it was worth a shot. I had my husband place my once again crying and bleeding tot on the counter and dipped my finger in honey and applied. She almost immediately stopped crying, and the bleeding stopped immediately too (which I didn’t expect, but it was a nice surprise). I applied it like this maybe 4-5 times, and she was calm and ready to just snuggle and forget the whole incident. This was not to be. She tried falling asleep, but she uses a dummy (a habit I’m working at breaking. Ironically enough, this was the night I was going to try putting her to sleep WITHOUT using the dummy, but I figured such a harrowing experience earned a last night with her source of comfort) as it turns out, the dummy(aka a Pacifier) only caused to rub her new injury leading to another round of crying (luckily no bleeding) so I left hubby to sooth her while I went back to the honey, dipped out a tablespoon into a small jar, and proceeded to add about 3 drops of tea tree oil to it, gave it a good mix with the spoon,and apply to the lip again. This time we had definite success, as she soon fell asleep (again with the dummy)and stayed asleep. I’m happy to report that there have been no incidents since, and the lip, despite its misfortune, is not even the slightest bit swollen. However, I did keep her foods rather soft today just to be safe. Also, a bit later after the incident occurred and she was sound asleep, I remembered the newly frozen strawberries that were sitting in my freezer that would have made a great “ice pack” that she might have actually kept in long enough to have any effect. I’ll have to remember that for next time. God forbid.

So, to recap:
If your child is over one year of age, and you are comfortable giving honey, then by all means, when the next split lip occurs, and your determined that everything saying that there’s nothing you can do for your child in these circumstances, must be wrong, don’t be afraid to apply a little bit of honey. You should always use local honey, because of the benefits listed here , and here , and here …….you get the picture. Do a google search. The Internet is a great tool, and knowledge is power.

Anyway, that’s all for today! Cheers!

P.s. there has to be a comical honey boo boo reference in here somewhere, but I can’t put it together. And for the record, no, I don’t watch that show.